Conventional emergency response systems employ circuited switched network through which voice call is routed to an appropriate emergency call center that is geographically capable of initiating a response to the emergency. However, the circuit switched nature of the call limits the ability of the caller to share other forms of information such as text, images, video, and data to the emergency call center. To address this limitation, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) identified the need for Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-11) in order to update emergency services infrastructure to include a packet switched network and to have the emergency call center accept emergency information including multimedia data from a caller. The NG9-11 system architecture is currently defined in a technical specification, commonly referred to as NENA “i3” standard.
NENA “i3” standard defines an Internet-Protocol (IP) based system. The IP based system includes different call routing entities that are responsible for routing an incoming emergency call to a downstream entity such as an emergency call center that can provide emergency assistance to the caller. The call routing entities receive information from upstream entities and invoke policy routing functions to perform the routing decision. However, current NENA “i3” standard limits the type of information that can be included in a standard event notification sent to call routing entities from downstream entities. This limitation may result in the degradation of emergency call service because the routing decisions are made based on very coarse data shared by the downstream entities.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.